All Our Yesterdays (23 page)

In the pine wood it came out what was wrong with Giustino, he had fallen in love with Danilo's wife and was suffering and wanted to forget her, because she was the wife of a friend of his and this friend was in banishment. Giustino told Cenzo Rena what an extraordinary woman she was, she endured all the unkindnesses of her sisters-in-law and her mother-in-law and had never a bitter word, and she ate nothing so as to send money to Danilo, Emanuele sent him money too but it was never enough because Danilo had fallen ill away there on the island and had to have expensive treatment. Emanuele used to invite her to lunch at a restaurant so as to make her eat. She was an extraordinary woman, said Giustino, and he would never be able to fall in love with anyone else, and every day he made up his mind not to see her again, however he always went with Emanuele to fetch her at the foundry, and he knew he would go on seeing her until he succeeded in going to the war as a volunteer. Cenzo Rena and Giustino walked for a very long time in the pine wood, and Giustino thought, as he had thought once upon a time, that Cenzo Rena was his dearest friend, the friend to whom one could say anything, but when they came back to the house Giustino was irritated by the sight of Anna and by the recollection that she was Cenzo Rena's wife and was even going to have a baby, it seemed to him an uncomfortable and depressing thought that Cenzo Rena and Anna slept together.

Cenzo Rena looked out of the window to see if the
contadini
were coming, he had so often said that the
contadini
came all the time and now he was upset that just that day nobody should come, But at last two or three
contadini
did arrive. Signora Maria had made tea, she had gone into the kitchen with La Maschiona and had shown her how to arrange the cups on the tray, with slices of lemon cut thin and toothpicks stuck into them and little napkins, she had brought some lemons with her from home because she had an idea that lemons were not to be found at San Costanzo, and indeed they were not to be found there in the winter and Signora Maria said how strange it was to have to bring lemons with you when you were coming to the South, and how strange it was, too, to come to the South and find such a cold winter, and to have to dress as you did at St. Moritz. La Maschiona did not know what St. Moritz was and she stood and looked at Signora Maria getting the tray ready, Signora Maria wanted her to put on a white apron to serve the tea but La Maschiona was unwilling because the
contadini
were there, seeing her with a white apron they would not have been able to keep from laughing. So she went into the dining-room in her torn blue dress with her scarf over her mouth and banged down the tray on the table and Signora Maria said to Anna that this woman palled La Maschiona had a great deal to learn. The
contadini
drank their tea in silence, they felt rather shy at all these new faces, but the word had already gone round the village that there were new faces at Cenzo Rena's and that tea was being drunk, and more
contadini
arrived. Emanuele, too, was shy and happy at seeing all these
contadini,
all these
contadini
of the South, he sat there very serious and red in the face and hazarded a few questions about grain and wine and pigs and Government land, speaking in a hesitating, thin voice and in great fear of asking the wrong questions. And Giustino in a whisper asked Anna whether he did not look like a provincial snob finding himself for the first time in a drawing-room full of duchesses. Anna said yes and they burst out laughing, and then Cenzo Rena came over to them and asked them what they were laughing at, and they told him and he laughed loudly too and Emanuele looked towards them suspiciously but immediately went on again asking his questions about matters suitable to
contadini.

Next day Emanuele had been into the kitchens of all the
contadini,
his long, deep peals of laughter resounded all over the village, he limped excitedly about the lanes and called the
contadini
by name and shouted out words in the San Costanzo dialect, and behaved as though he had been there at San Costanzo for many years, he slapped people on the shoulder and talked flirtatiously to the
contadini,
and before he left he had a photograph taken of himself with some of them in the village square. Giustino unexpectedly decided to leave with Emanuele, he ran off and hastily packed his bag and climbed on to the bus just as it was starting, and Signora Maria was bewildered because he had said before that he would stay at least a week, until the end of the holidays. Emanuele leant out of the window with a red and radiant face to say good-bye, and shouted words in the San Costanzo dialect and waved his arms to bid farewell to the
contadini,
it was clear that he was going to plague Giustino with grain and Government land during the whole journey. Signora Maria complained at Giustino's going away again, he had only just arrived and now he had gone away again, how little affection he had for his sister and what on earth could he have to do in the town that was so urgent, for some time now he had been very reserved and strange, and he had become quite unmanageable too, what an unpleasant character he had developed. After the bus had gone Cenzo Rena found the Turk standing close to him, he was very saddened and severe because he had not been introduced to the relations who had come from outside, all the
contadini
had been invited to drink tea and they had not remembered him. Now he wanted to be presented at least to Signora Maria. He bowed before Signora Maria with a cold obeisance.

They took the Turk back to the house and offered him tea, and all at once the Turk and Signora Maria struck up a great friendship, they started talking about carpets and Signora Maria had a great knowledge of carpets and was happy to be able to talk about them. Anna went and shut herself up in her room to think over all she had heard, Giuma wanting to get married to the girl Fiammetta and keeping her photograph on his desk, and no longer reading Montale but Kierkegaard instead, and Mammina with her eyeglasses amongst the sacks in the cellar, and Amalia and Franz in a ducal palace in a village like San Costanzo. All the new things she had heard were beating violently in her heart. Giuma was marrying the girl Fiammetta, the girl Fiammetta, suddenly Giuma was close to her again, he was reading Kierkegaard, no longer Montale but Kierkegaard instead, there were no books by Kierkegaard amongst Cenzo Rena's books. And Giustino had fallen in love with Danilo's wife, Cenzo Rena had told her about it the evening before while they were undressing. She felt mortified at all the things that were going on so far away from her. And now, for goodness knows how long, she would not hear any more news, outside the snow was falling and you could see the little village with its down-at-heel, crooked houses beneath the violent blasts of snow and wind, and the long snow-covered street with deep ruts made by the bus, and the house which had been the station-master's house and the river which was so narrow and green and the low hills. And there she was, sitting at the window in a deck chair, and she was knitting a garment for Giuma's baby, a baby who would never know anything about Giuma nor Giuma about him, Giuma goodness knows where, with the girl Fiammetta and Kierkegaard, the baby there at San Costanzo where the first things he would see would be the black houses whipped by the wind and the low hills.

Signora Maria said she would stay until the baby's birth. Cenzo Rena said to Anna that this was a calamity, they would tell her that the baby was being born prematurely but Signora Maria was certainly able to distinguish premature babies from those that were not. Cenzo Rena said it was the fault of the Turk, if it had not been for the Turk Signora Maria would have gone away again, if it had not been for the Turk coming to see her and the pair of them drinking tea together. But it was not only on account of the Turk that Signora Maria was staying, she had also taken it into her head to teach La Maschiona a whole quantity of things, she wanted her to wash the dishes with soda and La Maschiona tried to explain to her that if she washed the dishes with soda she would no longer be able to give the pigs the lovely greasy water from the plates, and Signora Maria did not understand and kept on pouring soda into the tub, and La Maschiona became desperate because of all the washing-up water that had to be thrown away. In the end Cenzo Rena forbade Signora Maria to poke her nose into the washing-up. Signora Maria also took to going round the kitchens of the
contadini,
and she looked at the children and came home in a state of indignation, saying that all the children had scabs on their heads and lice. Cenzo Rena said that the lice on their heads were the least part of the trouble, a great number of them also had those white lice on their backs and chests, the kind of lice that lived in the warmth of people's underclothes. Signora Maria asked him what then he was doing at San Costanzo, what did he tell the
contadini
if he did not even tell them that they ought to get rid of lice. Cenzo Rena asked her whether it was an easy matter to delouse an entire village. And lice were the least part of their troubles, he said, lice did not cause people to die, but there were other things of which people died, pneumonia and dysentery. Dysentery was the worst of all, each summer numbers of children fell ill with it, and he went into the houses to explain about diet and made the doctor come with him, and even left money for them to buy rice. But the
contadini
did not buy the rice and sewed up the money in their mattresses, and the children trailed about the lanes and sucked cabbage-stalks and fig-skins, and they cried and then their mothers took them on their backs and carried them down to the shop and for a few lire bought them pieces of almond paste, and the children still cried and then one night they died, and they carried them off to the cemetery in little boxes. It was a village that knew nothing beyond its own misery, and the
contadini
who came to see him, Cenzo Rena, and listened to him and understood him and liked him, even they, in their homes, had money sewn into their mattresses which they were incapable of spending on medicines or rice, even they had children in the lanes sucking cabbage-stalks and pieces of almond paste, with bare bellies and lice and dysentery. And the misery was just as contagious as the dysentery, because even the rich ones lived in the same way as the poor ones, with all their money sewn up in their mattresses and nothing to cover themselves with in winter and dysentery in summer, and that same diet of almond paste and cabbage-stalks, and always lice. But afterwards Cenzo Rena thought about lice all night long, and next day he called the schoolmistress and told her to get the hair cropped of all the children who came to school, in fact he was angry with her for not having thought of it before.

In the village, at present, the whole talk was of pigs, the ones of the year before that had to be killed and the little ones that had to be bought, and the village square was full of little pigs squealing in carts and in wooden cages, and people came to buy them and dragged them away on the end of a rope. La Maschiona was continually running off to her own home to see to the preparation of sausages and hams, and hurrying away to Masuri and Scoturno to buy salt, because there was little of it to be had in that year of war and you had to go searching for it from one village to another, and Signora Maria was continually calling La Maschiona and La Maschiona wasn't there, the fire was going out and Signora Maria had to throw logs on it and blow, and when she blew a long time she felt herself getting giddy. La Maschiona would come back in the evening and display the sausages to show how fine they were, but Signora Maria was not moved by the sausages because she feared they would be harmful to her liver. Signora Maria drank tea with the Turk and relieved her feelings to him on the subject of La Maschiona and all the rest, for Anna paid no attention to her and it seemed that in marrying Cenzo Rena she had married the whole of this village of San Costanzo, including La Maschiona and the lice and the pigs.

Signora Maria did not stay until the birth of the baby, because a letter arrived from Concettina to say that her husband had been summoned to the district recruiting-office and would certainly be sent off to the war, but they did not know where. Concettina was in despair and Signora Maria decided to leave at once, she was reconciled with La Maschiona by the time she left because La Maschiona made a big buckwheat cake for Concettina, and she was also reconciled, at the last moment, with Cenzo Rena, because he told her not to worry about money but to spend calmly what was left in the bank and he would be responsible for sending her more money if they were left without. Signora Maria told Anna that she had always been wrong about Cenzo, he was not in the least mad when you came to know him well, and besides, there was also the advantage that they could not call him up into the army because he was no longer so very young. She got into the bus with all her parcels and boxes and with her wine-flask of coffee for the journey, Cenzo Rena had offered her a Thermos but she did not believe in Thermos flasks, she had never believed in them. She said she would come back to see the baby. Signora Maria, however, never came back to San Costanzo.

4

The baby was a girl and was born at the beginning of March. Cenzo Rena intended to go in his car to fetch a doctor from the town, because he had not much confidence in the San Costanzo doctor, but he left it too late and the baby was born under the charge of La Maschiona and the midwife. The San Costanzo doctor, a man who was always very lazy and gloomy, was there too, that day he was even gloomier than usual because he had discovered, no one knew how, that Cenzo Rena wanted another doctor and had no confidence in him. They gave the baby the name of Silvana because Cenzo Rena said it was the name of his first love. He went and looked for the picture of his first love so as to show it to Anna : she was a lady with a long skirt right down to her feet and very tight, it had been many, many years ago. At the christening the baby was held by La Maschiona and by the gloomy doctor, Cenzo Rena said they must do something to comfort him for having thought they had no confidence in him. The baby was fair and thin and bore no resemblance to anybody.